We imagine that there are fixed forms which our language labels or which can be pointed to, literally and concretely, in language. Against this, Nietzsche insists that language creates concepts; all language, not just literary language, is metaphorical. It takes the concrete and sensible world and refers to it through something else, such as the sign or the concept. All language, then, by virtue of the fact that it is language, is creative.

The formation of a language responds to a way of approaching the world, so that language is an action, or a constant question and creation in response to experience. So words are dependent upon tasks or paths (differentiations) through which we approach what is other than ourselves; a word gives order to a sense which pre-exists it.

In an era of capitalism, where any exchange is quantifiable and reinvested to produce further exchange, Deleuze insisted on an expenditure and excess: productions that are not for any foreseeable or calculable end but that produce the new as such.

In an age where we believe that language structures our reality Deleuze argued that the ‘real’ included but went beyond events such as language; there are signs in nature and in inhuman life. In an age where we believe that art is just what institutions or galleries define as art, Deleuze insisted on the force of art as affect and the eternally new. In an age of communication, information and exchange, Deleuze insisted on the philosophical creation of concepts – concepts that resisted and complicated exchange and recognition.